Therapeutic Ambiguities
by Kampilan
Summary: Skeletons and sex. More fun for Shizuru and Natsuki.
1. Chapter 1

I own (and live in) an old house where the ancient barangay of Sapa once stood proudly, a cup of coffee, and eight abusive cats, but I do not own Mai Hime.

This is set in the Mai Hime Destiny universe. I prefer to pertain to this as an experiment. A sudden shift in writing style, yes? Because I enjoy being random, because I've never tried writing in the first-person before, and because I'm bored to the point of ennui, I bring you another fanfic. Enjoy. Warning though: I have trouble writing as another character. Yes, I am as inflexible as a wooden pencil. So do forgive me if it's a bit OOC. Aha, but it's up to you to decide if its OOC or not.

I extend my deepest gratitude to Amanda, for those humor filled yet witty conversations. _Maraming salamat sa iyo._

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* * *

  
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**Therapeutic Ambiguities  
**

**-**

**-  
**

"Sit.", she said as she pointed towards the solitary chair in the middle of the room.

I had no qualms with what I did. I was merely exercising my right as a free individual. That orange-haired bastard, Muritake, was asking for it. It was an unmistakably villainous motion. She strutted towards me with her stilettos clicking the gleaming red floors, with a lecherous smile that matched those wanton eyes. Before I could even verbalize my refusal, I found myself being straddled by Muritake; her long curls all over my face, the bridge of her long nose touching my chin, and I could feel the heat of her desire spread on my thighs. Disgusted, I turned away from her with a scowl. She laughed impishly and licked my ears in response. Hmph! An odd response indeed. I assume that she must've thought that I found her irresistible.

I found her irresistible, alright. Irresistible to beat up! So while her hands unclasped the buttons of my blouse, I wrapped my arms around her waist and pinned her down with my weight. "Ooh…feeling dominant today, neh?", she said with a laugh. I grinned and nodded my head. Before she could even unclasp the last button of my blouse, I lifted her up and threw her across the room and—

"Muritake-san got twenty eight stitches on the head because of what you did. Even with the Nano-machines on, it will take her three days of rest to completely recover."

It was not my intention to open for forehead. I am not – and I was NEVER interested in seeing what's inside Murataki Shiki's head. I am positive that there's nothing in it. NOTHING AT ALL. It just so happened that she tried to break the fall with a summersault. I only wanted her to get six stitches. She was supposed to hit the wall, not fly out of the window. But Murataki, being the idiot that she was, had to breakfall. She just HAD to breakfall. So as she laughed out curses whilst twirling in the air like a yoyo free from its string, she forgot to hit the brakes and she twirled and twirled across the room, through the open window and out, out into the corridors, where her mouth and forehead met the cold, unforgiving cement.

'_Think you've won?!'_ Twirl. Twirl. _'Slut. Bitch.' _Twirl. Twirl_. 'Conceited little prick. Die. Die. Diiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—' _

**BLAG**

.

"Tea?"

I could sense her displeasure. It was just written all over Shizuru's face. I nodded in agreement. Aye, it was a heroic deed. I sent the devil back to the fiery depths of hell with twenty eight stitches on the head! Throwing her out of the window – INTENTIONALLY. Please do not forget the word 'INTENTIONALLY – was the noblest deed that I've ever done in my entire life!

Sure, I could've just slapped her, pulled her hair, and then screamed "You're a whore! A filthy, retarded whore!" into her ear. But that's not my job – that's her mother's job, and I certainly am not MOTHERLY. Scream out insults? Yeah, right. Sirs and madams, I suppose you are all enlightened enough to realize that sound waves vastly differ from laser beams. If screaming can imprint the word 'WHORE' into her brain, then I would've gladly shouted my lungs off two and a half hours ago. But the problem is: It just doesn't. It never works. You don't talk idiots into enlightenment - you punch their lights out.

"You do realize that this will result into a major deduction in your GWA."

Deduction? I'm getting punished for defending myself against a potential rapist? Horse shite. Has the planet gone mad?! I sought justice with my own hands – and I am the one being judged? They would rather have me raped? This is ridiculous – no! This is madness! Why?

"For throwing a classmate out of the window! What else?", Shizuru replied with a sarcastic laugh, answering my silent question.

Before I could even take a sip of my Jasmine tea, I felt Shizuru's delicate fingers on my cheek.

That's when everything began to sparkle like sequins – red ones, to be precise. I caught myself panting even though I was motionless.

Breath caught her between lips – eyes met eyes that showed me how her blood boiled with desire. I gasped as I felt her lips upon my own. My bones felt brittle, my legs turned into water, and stars seemed to have formed above us, and slowly, like the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, supernovas engulfed us.

"I need you." I whispered into her ear. She hushed me with a kiss.

DING-DONG.

She moved away from me and I blushed in response. It's that damn bell again. One of these days – I SWEAR – One of these days, I'm going to have to end its tyranny. Yes, yes, maybe that sledgehammer in the janitor's closet will do-

"Natsuki"

"Yes,Shizuru?"

"It's time for you to go to class."

To be quite honest, I hate class. I HATE CLASS. But I love Shizuru and I'd do anything for her. So I bowed politely and took my leave.

-

* * *

Now, here was one class that I hated the most. Philosophy. I just hate every pretentious, slimy, drooling, cock-eyed bastard that sat with me in that small classroom. I hated the old busts of the great old men and women who perpetuated the collapse of rational time management. I should be at my room – spending my time wisely by catching up on all those sleepless term paper making nights or having cuddle sessions with Shizuru. But No! No! those pricks just had to question the purpose of life. They just had to question the existence of everything – from the pile of cow shit stuck on their foot to the snot that dangled on their nose hair. That, my friend, is without a doubt, idleness at its best.

How would such fiddles do me any good? So what if we all lived in some parallel universe after all or that some omnipotent God did create this lifetime for his own amusement? How would such disposable knowledge be of any use to me? And if I ever uncover all the mysteries of the universe – from the creation of life to the metaphysical hullabaloos like the mind is actually another being closely linked to our physical state, just as some cocaine pumped thinker 'theorized' – Would this knowledge befitting a god keep me free from hunger, sickness, thirst, or dysmenorrhea forever? I don't fucking think so.

It was very early in the morning and I was still sleepy. That little punch and Judy skit kept me awake for only a few minutes. In truth, I haven't grown accustomed to the impossible schedules of school. The minute I left Shizuru's presence, I felt every quart of energy and politeness drip out of my veins. So I melted on my chair and nodded my head out of sheer drowsiness.

My seat mate drooled over her chair. Whether it was out of sleepiness or brainlessness, I could not tell. Perhaps it was both. Anyway, I could not blame her. The usual conspirators of the class were once again turning our brains into mash with the shite that escaped their lips.

"B-but poverty is just a sign of bad governance. It is an omen! An omen – a sign that there has to be a change within the system."

"DAMN RIGHT! WE SHOULD JUST GUILLOTINE THOSE NOBLES– or the headmaster! Choose whoever you want to see dead first, but I beg you all to give me the honor of being the executioner.", my sarcastic classmate, Ezura, answered back. I laughed at the said statement while the teacher glowered at us.

"Actually, I agree with Ezura-san. This system has lasted for years and years and this whole triangle thing – with a handful of nobles on top, with the majority, the poor, down below, and with the forever equivocating middle class in between the clashing classes. "

"I beg your pardon, Basara," Another pretentious midget interrupted, "But DO NOT forget that this system has lasted successfully for years and years. It has the kept people alive up to now! Don't you think it's a rash act to retort to immediate change without even considering the consequences of this whole 'system change'?"

"DEAREST CLASSMATES, WE HAVE BEEN GRANTED BY OUR HIGHLY ESTEEMED COLLEAGUE, THE RIGHT AND POWER TO SLAP ANY POLITICIAN THAT YOU SEE ON THE STREET WITH CHICKEN LIVER AND PORK SPLEEN. DO EXERCISE YOUR CLASSMATE-GIVEN RIGHT THE MOMENT YOU SEE OUR HEADMASTER WALKING AROUND – ArghhhH!!"

My teacher pinched my classmate and sent her away silently. She snickered in response and hopped gaily out of the room while the wannabe philosophers laughed at her 'defeat'. Such fools. They did not realize that she had won after all. It was in her intention to get herself kicked out of the classroom. She hated that class as much as I did. I might have to copy her style someday.

-

"Enough of this discussion. You will be given enough time and lessons in your upcoming political thought class and I know well that such a topic is not fit for this class. Now, let's go to the subject matter of this glorious morrow."

Glorious my itching ass.

"Neh, Natsuki…"

I don't know…sometimes I love her, sometimes she just annoys the hell out of me. She can be good company though. It'll be a big, fat lie to say that I didn't enjoy being with Mai-san – even though she can be a bright colored pest from time to time. She sat two chairs apart from me. I had to nudge my chair forward to hear her.

"What is it?"

She began to mumble something whilst covering her mouth with her right hand. I could've read her lips, but for fear of getting caught by the teacher, she kept covering her face with either her hand or her book.

"What? What? I can't hear you. I can't – Look. Mai, look. I can't-"

But she kept talking and talking as if she couldn't hear me.

"I can't hear you!"

"Kuga! Stand up!"

I did as I was told. No point arguing. All I could do was glare at Mai who by then was facing the blackboard and innocently reading her textbook. Had this been fighting class, I would've instantly jumped on Mai and strangled her until she was half dead. I suddenly wished I was still in Elementary school and the only punishment that I got every time I made a mistake was a deduction to my proud collection of smiling paper stars.

Everyone looked at me, eager for a response. I cleared my throat and the teacher raised a brow at me.

-

"Kuga-san," she began in a grisly manner. By the look on her face I could tell that one more bloody blunder would send me to detention. "Ooro-kun wants to hear your view on the equality of the sexes.

Give me a fucking break. We're in high school already and we're still asserting gender or sex differences?!

I looked at Ryu Ooro. He and his boys were smiling cockily at me. His pathetic girlfriend kept chewing on her lower lip as if it were a piece of gum. I'd love to see these morons burn like firewood in hell one day. I never belittled people for traits that they were born with such as ethnicity, gender, or even ADHD. I resent people for what they make themselves. People aren't born assholes – they chose to be assholes, and by adapting the norms, values, and practically graduating with a doctorate on assholism, they become completely despicable and unworthy of my respect and attention.

The details are blurry…but from what I remember, Ryu insisted that men and women are unequal but balanced. Once again, I was presented with the good old biological argument. Cocksure that anything with numbers in it is worth mentioning, (I half expected him to say something about sperm count. Thank God that crap didn't fly out of his trap) he proceeded to tell me about how the left side of the brain is more active in males, and that the males grow more muscles than females.

I stood there, flabbergasted. You see, stupidity can be infectious. I felt at a complete loss of words. The room was flooded with so much testosterone, I almost grew a beard. I even had the urge to break beer bottles on my head. It was worse than getting screamed at by a monkey.

-

When he finally finished with a pompous attempt at sarcasm: '_Punch em' in the ovaries.'_

I opened my mouth to speak, but I was taken back by the glimmer of despise that grew in Ryu's girlfriend's eyes. She hated me just as her boyfriend did. I was supposed to say something empowering, something along the lines of: _'Stop acting like his whore and show him that you're also a human being!'_

Shizuru had already consulted that girl about how…well, that not everything that society teaches us is right. She was under the protection of the Student Council, and Shizuru told her that she would not allow Ryu and his friends to lay even a finger on her. She resented Shizuru for that. She did not want Shizuru's protection. She didn't believe in any of those 'break the powerplay' ideas. I guess she was just happy with her position. She did not feel the need to be empowered, to be liberated from her dick-head boyfriend and his chauvinistic ideas. I guess…empowerment is also subjective in its context?

"I believe that despite the biological differences, males and females are equal. Eversince patriarchy has somehow weakened in our society, women have proven that they are also capable of doing what used to be considered 'male' jobs. And—"

"First of all, it's insane to dismiss the fact that there always is and there ALWAYS will be a dichotomy between the two sexes.", Ryu rudely butted in, "The male psyche is just completely different from the female psyche. First of all, in case you haven't taken up fifth grade biology class yet, allow me to inform you that there is a difference between testosterone and estrogen. Testosterone is responsible for the-"

"I'm well aware of what testosterone is and what estrogen is."

Packs of bastards were laughing at me. It's time to get sarcastic, I reckoned.

"I think an illustration of how it all works will help you understand. Imagine a caveman family."

Someone began to whistle the Flinstone's theme from behind the room. The teacher silenced the musical entity with a hiss.

"Imagine a cave man family."

"Yes, yes. I'm imagining it. Stop being so damn redundant"

"When the family gets attacked by a T-rex, the female of the species would grab her children and scram, while the father would stay and fight. That's the manly thing to do."

First of all, the analogy was just plain stupid. I couldn't help chuckling at the image of a hairy, almost cousin-Itt like pencil necked freak, wrestling a humongous dinosaur. There is a fine line that separates honorable suicide from dying stupidly. Secondly, even some of the boys in the classroom shook their heads in disagreement. Men weren't supposed to be all muscles but no brains.

-

I was suddenly reminded of those Sunday Morning cartoons wherein abnormally muscular soldiers march through fiery battlefields of suicidal grenades and tetanus barb wire. They'd take out a whole battalion of skinny, brown guerillas with just one round of their colts and poke the eyes off of bolo wielding hukbalahaps(1) with their exposed, erect nipples. No one, and I mean, NO ONE spoke in those shows. Everyone just screamed their balls off. I don't know how these men were able to read their comrades emotions. They were always so fucking angry; the devil himself would crawl up his ass from fright. I suppose anyone who menstruated would not be able to tell their smile from their frown.

"PRIVATE!!! GET YOUR GUN HERE, YOU GET YOUR GUN HERE AND STAY HERE-"

"NO! NO! NO! CAPTAIN! NO! NO! NO! WE'LL BURN IN THIS SHITHOLE TOGETHER LIKE TWO FLAMING PIECES OF SHIT!"

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! MOVE! MOVE! I'LL COVER YOU! MOVE! MOVE OR I'LL SHOOT YOUR FLAMING ASS WITH MY ZOOKA, YOU TWIT!"

"DAMN IT, CAP'N! I LOVE YOU! IT'S AN HONOR TO DIE BY YOUR SIDE!"

Had one of those men been a lean and clean man, this dialogue would've been considered a romantic gay scene. The protagonists of the series were so devoid of estrogen – In fact, I still find it hard to imagine that they were breastfed by some normal looking woman. They seemed to have suckled barrels of oil and luger upon their birth. Shit, imagine a muscular toddler. That bastard can punch a whole right through your knee.

I guess another factor that made those shows so masculine was all the gore. Despite the brazen, veined bodies of the protagonists, they were so damn soft. I remember an episode wherein one of the soldiers was stabbed on the left thigh with a barbecue stick by a guerrilla, and gallons of blood squirted out of the wound before a bone flew out of it.

I've shot a lot of morons already and believe me, they didn't bleed that much. But the people in that show…God. They bled enough blood to flood and sink the entire continent of Asia. You'd think they were water sprinklers whenever they got shot. Curiously, everyone in that show got shot a few good times, but no one died in the end.

-

Anyway, I think that my laughter must've insulted Ryu and his band of brothers. They were quiet and their looks were stern.

"If you think that's bravery, well you're wrong. That's just plain old stupidity. Are you saying that the difference that sets the two sexes apart is that women are more logical than men?"

"On the contrary, self righteous one, it's just that the masculine instinct to protect-"

"Okay, let me get this straight. You'd rather get eaten by one of Spielberg's pets for the sake of male pride, than flee to a better and safer cave to raise your children. That's protection for you? Or is this perception of protection different for men and women?"

"Yes, it is different for men and-"

"Then what the hell are we still using the dictionary for? If we can't agree on a word's particular meaning, if meaning varies, then we should have a dictionary for men and a dictionary for women. But that would just make communication difficult, right?"

"It's the method of pro-"

"Wait. I'm not finished. How will you understand my point if you don't listen to it? The problem with you is that you seem to put everything about you on top. I'm only talking about you and your other drooling fanboys there. Yeah, you. Hey, wipe that drool off of your chin, dimwit."

"Kuga-san!", the teacher scolded me. Screw her. This moron was bashing me three minutes ago and she didn't do anything.

"Secondly, how can you be sure that this 'instinct' applies to all men? How can you be sure that all men are stupid enough to wrestle godzillas with their bare fists? Togo, would you fight a _**tyrannosaurus**_ rex?"

"Not for all the jewels in the world. No!", my classmate replied. He chortled and gave me a thumbs up after he said his piece.

"See. The problem with you is that you generalize too much. You apply your twisted concepts of gender on everyone and you expect everyone to be just like you. Sorry, but not everyone grew up sucking his dad's dick."

He remained quiet for sometime. I saw his girlfriend pat his back. He brutally brushed the fragile hand aside and glowered at me.

"Generalize too much, eh? How about you. You keep using this whole concept of subjectivity, when you don't even respect my opinion!"

"Oh, I respect your opinion! I just don't want to hear it."

"That's enough! Kuga, Ooro! Don't turn this discussion as a ground for bad mouthing one another."

-

"Well, it's your fault." I told my teacher bluntly. Everyone sunk in their seats. They knew the teacher was about to kick my ass to kingdom come. I knew it too. But I just couldn't let this one pass. No.

"If only you weren't so keen in asserting the differences between boys and girls, then none of this would've happened."

-

"Psst...Natsuki..."

It was Mai again.

"What the hell is it?!"

She threw a crumpled piece of paper at me. I unfolded it and read her message:

_'Control you temper'_

_.XoXoXo.  
_

Well…damn. I got more then I bargained for.

-

* * *

-

Shizuru tried to help me. But she said I went too far this time. In truth, I've done worse shit in the past. I guess the teacher was just in a sour mood today. What an asshole. Ooro just got a few detention hours with that noisy Haruka. He's just going to get one hell of an earful from that loudmouth.

But me?

Oh, the horrors of all horrors. I always got the special treatment. They say it's because I'm genuinely troublesome.

It was not even daybreak yet and the morning chill penetrated inside your bones. Nevertheless, the discipline body didn't care; they wanted me to perform community service. The farm was located a few good miles away from the Academy. The school staff wanted to make sure that we freaks of nature were fed with the right kind of food. Hoshinomoya actually owned a farm. It was located at a valley between two lush mountains. Had this been a camping trip, I would've relished the cold mountain air, literally slurping it as if it were cucumber soup. Completely unprepared, (and also since I wanted to give the council the impression that I was invincible) I trudged across the mill in a thin, blue t-shirt, and my old grey jeans. Stupid, stupid me.

The farm was owned by a middle aged couple. Mr. Hiyashitsu Wang, whose name reminds me of dogs, was a stark man who spent most of his time inside his house. Mrs. Chihiyo Wang was a plump, tart tongued hag whose maiden name was said to have granted her a lifetime of resentment. She was often away, in contrast to her partner who desolated himself in his shabby little hut.

How they were able to provide the school with freshmilk still ranks as one of the world's greatest unsolved mysteries. You'd think the cows were highly civilized beings, capable of finding their own food, cooking caviar, and capable of milking themselves with those two lovebirds running the farm.

-

I emerged, shivering underneath the shade of tall sepia trees, with four empty pails.

"That's right, that's right. That's what ya gits fer bein' a bad child, ya spawn of da' devil ya. Don't ya dare drop diz pails! Don't ya dare mess with mah cows or I'll sink my foot up your ass sooo hard, ya'll find it a chore ta shite fer weeks."

Was that the proper thing t o say to a teenage girl?! Talk about manners. If only I wasn't shivering like a toddler learning how to walk, I would've ringed the old man's neck. Fortunately for him, before I could come back with some smart ass reply, he returned to his house with a scowl.

-

I had to milk the cows and that was what I did. So I went to the barn and started milking the cows until I had the two pails brimming with milk. While I was milking the darn cow, I heard what I thought were groans. I was at the peak of my sleepiness so I brushed the noises away. I began to consider sleeping on the haystacks.

I began to think of Shizuru again. I missed her. We really needed to go out on a date. Things were tough for the two of us with all those factions sprouting out from nowhere like worms.

"NGOoooooOooorroooooOOOooOOO"

There went that blasted groan again. I was half finished with my third pail of milk when the cow began to trash about and groan louder. The barn was dimly lit by a single oil lamp. Luckily, being the Girl Scout that I am, I brought my small flash light along with me. When I took my flashlight and beamed it on the shed, I got the surprise of my life.

-

-

Mrs. Wang! I just milked Mrs. Wang!

-

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

The point is not to appeal to a majority, given that a surplus of fictions and fiction writers are committed to such a cause, but to please a certain minority.

* * *

**ASSYMETRY IN CONFORMITY **

Before the class had even started, Shizuru had longed for it to end. She will retreat to _their_ secret hideout. There in the affinity of trees that look like lovers in a perilous dance of lust, she will meet with Natsuki. There they would be free from the eyes of the children of the world, and perhaps even of the world itself. But for now, discourses in history and politics must be settled in less than twenty minutes, lest the class wants to undergo another 'ten minute extension' which is torture for all of them.

"Where in God's green earth is Bangladesh?", a young man asks his seatmate.

"Is it even green there?", the latter replies, and they all laugh at their ignorance.

Ignorance never did amuse Shizuru. She deemed it a duty of every sane human being to 'know'. Education need not be limited to the comforts of a classroom, and the mind need not be confined within the desolate and rather frugal quarters of the human flesh. The world is wide; wide enough for one to explore before dying, and my good god, a trip to either the library of google-dot-com isn't hard to do. It isn't like Bangladesh means the world or the world is centred on Bangladesh alone. Certainly, certainly, they weren't in Bangladesh and it isn't just around the corner. But to **not know** where Bangladesh is and that people from Bangladesh actually do exist is, for her, such a sin against rationality and the Bangladeshis. She even doubts that these two rascals knew that the word 'Bangladesh' actually existed before class.

A girl walks up to the two men who are now seated in their respective chairs and says: "Are you stupid or what? Bangladesh is a city in India!"

Shizuru almost falls from her seat.

Behind her, the girls were giggling over their 'costume ideas'. To her right, a boy is busily trying to get laid. She has no one to talk to.

Sure, everyone is practically dying to converse with her.

But to actually _listen _to her?

'_They would definitely be turned off'. _For truly, truly, she enjoys the admiration, she enjoys seeing her effect on their gravity. She knows they respect her although they lust for her noisily and silently, but she craves for something more, something much more intellectually and spiritually rewarding. Enough of chocolates, and sighs, and Valentine cards, and superficial praises for something as superficial as the beauty of her skin and the redness of her eyes! She longs for compassion: a deeper understanding of her deeper self. This is something only Natsuki can spare her. Though the girl sometimes suffer from Laconia sometimes (Shizuru blames it on the heat), Natsuki listens to her earnestly; not by ear but by heart. Everyone seems too fixated on their present selves, never on what may come or what is happening beyond them! _'Children could be starving in Bangladesh and here you three are; exchanging baseball cards.' _

She sometimes fears that she is indeed vain – even self-righteous. This thought haunts her to no end. Natsuki tells her that she isn't, but she feels it to be true sometimes. Why should they trouble themselves with the problems of Bangladeshis when they were Japanese.

"Excuse me, Fujino-san, can I invite you over for some tea this afternoon?"

"I appreciate the kind gesture, Rureka, but I have very important matters to finish."

Then she remembers why she even bothers to be prim and proper even towards rowdy, unemployed, drunkards: they are, after all, human.

It is because of this single, ubiquitous yet often invisible common ground that she replies to monotonous fan-letters, crudity, and other ghastly forms of mankind with politeness. It is also for this reason that she finds it a wonder that some, if not most, actually choose not to know, to waste away what centuries of evolution and historic struggle have conspired to empower, to enlarge, to widen: the human mind! The labyrinth where the grimmest and the purest of thoughts and ideas meet and clash to form substance upon substance, rhetoric upon rhetoric! Where books are first written, where revolutions are first planned, where assassinations are first plotted!

Now as a group of classmates approach her with smiles wider than Ceshire grins, she unrolls the small piece of paper in her hand and reads the name of the place she had been tasked to represent.

"Fujino-sama, what did you get? I got Kazakhstan!"

"I got Kosovo!"

"I got Basque-land!"

They silently wait for a response. Shizuru is silent. Her face is emotionless, her thoughts unreadable. They stretch their necks for an answer.

A second.

A blink.

And-

"Darfur."

They all blink again and again in their confusion.

"Darfur?"

"Where is that?"

"Is that a country?"

"No," Shizuru explains calmly without looking at the crowd, "it's a region in Sudan."

"**EEEEEeeeeehhhhhhhhh?",** they all shriek in frustration.

"But I wanted to see Shizuru-sama in her yellow kimono!"

"I wanted to hear her speak German! I hear she speaks really good German!"

The task that had been laid out before the class was simple: they are to host a beauty pageant were they would represent that particular countries/regions they had picked via drawlots. The categories for judging the contestant are simple: thirty percent for beauty (naturally,) twenty five percent for the costume, twenty five percent for the Question and Answer portion (or what Shizuru likes to call: 'advertise your stupidity portion), and twenty percent for audience impact. The teacher, of course, would be the one to determine the first three categories. This is their class project, and their objective was to "Show Fuuka Gakuen How Beautiful the World Truly is with its Diversity of Cultures!".

When Shizuru had learned of this a few minutes ago, she had wanted to vomit right in front of the professor. She never really liked beauty-pageants although she indulged in the private modelling that Natsuki did for her in her room. The objective is clearly the work of an eight year old child. In fact, her imaginary four year old brother could've written something better.

"Neh, Shizuru-sama, do you want to exchange places with me? I picked South Korea."

Shizuru is tempted. South Korea is definitely easier to represent. The National Costume is easier to conceptualize and sew. But she said: "No, thank you. That would be unfair to the others."

"What do Darfurians look like, Shizuru-sama?"

"The Darfurian population is split between the Arab and the Indigenous Population."

"So you're costume will be the National costume of Sudan?"

"I still need to consider that. I am thankful for your suggestion."

"Now class, I want you to take this thing very seriously as if your life depended on it! If I see Mr. Or Ms. North Korea dressing up as Kim Jong Il and carrying a large Nuclear Weapon as a props, I swear, I will fail you!"

Shizuru suddenly wishes she picked some other place. How will she 'represent' Darfur?

But then the bell rings and so does Shizuru's heart.

* * *

.

_Where there is danger, there is darkness. _

Scurry radio lines, electronic cackles, and then a woman's voice surfaces from the sea of noise:

"Incoming. Bravo One, this is Alpha Six, do you copy?"

"Bravo One, we copy.", another voice replies. This one is higher in pitch and strung with gaudiness, as if she is singing her words.

"We have a code 54, I repeat: A CODE 54."

"Does she look rich?"

"Plenty."

"Bravo One, describe the target."

"Squat, bulky. Is wearing pearls and a nice little watch. Looks Expensive. Looks eclectic."

"Los Lobo, do you copy?"

But there is no reply.

"Los Lobo, do you copy?"

"Yeah, yeah. I copy, Shion." this one is husky and low, very much drenched in attitude.

"Move in to position thirty four and with your good eye, see if you read 's lips."

"Gotcha."

An eerie silence follows, and then a hushed voice calls in:

"Good lighting. Near school. Good location. I can't...er...get...oh, she's saying the kids are alright. Looks like we got a hot one."

Shion swims away from her sheets as she scurries outside of her room and into the second floor hall of the women's dormitory where the other occupants anxiously stare at her, waiting for an order.

They remain as still and as quiet as a tiger preparing to pounce on its prey. And then her walky-talky sounds and Natsuki booms: "May day! May day! They're moving to position one! I repeat: they're moving to position one!"

"PLACES! PLACES! PLACES, EVERYONE, PLACES!", Shion commands like a ship-captain braving against a raging sea. The girls hurry back towards their rooms. Shion straightens her white shirt and her corduroy pants, takes a deep puff of air and then makes a dash towards the comfort room.

The floors creek as someone climbs up the stairs. The girls' hearts pound harder, faster, as the footsteps grow louder, and louder, nearer, and nearer until:

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A bulky woman in her mid 40's looks around the hallway.

"Gee, this place looks really nice! Don't you think so, Miya-chan?"

The girl in the red jacket responds with a sheepish yes. She scans the room with her round eyes. Her sneakers squeak as she makes her way through the identical green doors. Her mother follows her, making sure that 'Miya' likes the place she picked for her. She wants only the best dormitory for her daughter, and she cannot help smiling as her daughter explores the place with apparent curiosity.

A door opens and closes. The mother and child turn around to where the sound came from. It is Shion. She creeps towards her room, 'trying' not to catch the visitors' attention.

"Hello there, young lady!"

She feigns surprise: her eyes widen for a moment, her body stiffens a bit as she cordially asks: "Yes, ma'am?"

"Are you a resident of this dorm?"

"Most, certainly ma'am. I am a certified resident of this loverly, loverly place."

"What a bright child! Look, Miya, this young lady will be your dorm mate soon."

"Howdy-do?", Shion smiles as she extends a friendly hand at Miya

"Um...", Miya stutters, unsure of how to reply to Shion, "I'm pleased to meet you to.". She does not take her hand, but she bows to Shion very politely.

"The name's Shion. Tennouji, Shion."

"I hope we can become friends."

"So, Miss Tennouji, we were wondering if you can tell us a little something about this dorm. Little Miya here is going to study in Hoshinomoya."

"Really? Why that's splendid!"

"Yes, we live far away from here. We live in the Tokai region and Miya needs a place to stay. Now, your landlady tells us that this home of yours is a very nice place to live in."

Shion smiles. This is the precise moment that she had been waiting for. _'Calculations correct. Initiating response.' _Almost mechanically, Shion formulates a reply quicker than the woman could ask: "what is the dorm really like?"

"Well, the dormitory is suitable for survival, missus."

The woman and her daughter's toothy smiles fade. "W-what exactly do you mean by that?"

"We have beds, good enough to support the average weight," upon mentioning the word 'average' the woman's face twists a bit, "there's table for you to eat on or do your assignments on. There's a shower, sometimes there's always cold water running through it, sometimes there's also hot water. We have windows for air-conditioning."

"Windows?"

"Yes, ma'am. You heard me right: we have windows. Highly advanced windows: They have glasses!"

"Don't you have 'proper air conditioning'?"

"Well...", Shizuru pauses to clear her throat, signalling the girls to proceed to the next step of their plan, "It depends on how you'd define 'proper ma'am'"

"Young lady, can you please elaborate for me?"

"We have windows."

"That's it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"No air-cons, ceiling fans or any other type of fans?"

"None."

"Now how about that!", the woman exclaims in disbelief, "how's the weather here? Don't you need fans to keep you cool?"

"Well it's not so bad. I mean, we all adapt, right? We all get used to our environment. So yeah, well, it's um...it's usually **hellish."**

"Hellish?"

"It's not so bad. I mean, it's just like the heat of the first circle of hell, not the fourth or the ninth. We usually take turns fanning each other, so don't worry. Little Miya will be just fine. And oh! There's one more thing! It's...it's..."

"What?"

Shion adjusts her glasses as she pretends to be in deep thought. Her eyebrows crease, some sweat forms on her upper lip and on her temples. She bits her lower lip as she shakes her head and says: "no, nothing. Nothing at all. Just a teensy weensy thing that you really don't need to know."

"What is it?"

"Nothing really. It's just a small little stone in my shoe! Haha! I'm sure little Miyu has enough temperance to live with it."

"I-its Miya, and w-well, what is it? What are you hiding from us?", Miya asks as her round face pales from anxiety.

Shion leans forward and whispers: "They're listening..."

"Who?"

Shion's eyes widen. There is a horrified expression on her face. She shakes in fear, she trembles with torment. Her voice falls into a ragged whisper: **"THE GIRLS."**

"The girls?"

"**SHHhhhhhhhhhhhh!",** she crawls back in a very exorcist-like manner towards her room's door. "They're listening..."

"B-but your landlady said you're all nice girls."

"That's because she doesn't know."

The mother and her daughter rush towards Shion. They try to enter her room, but Shion does not let them. "I can't stay much longer, missus. It's the girls. They don't like it when I warn visitors. I'm sorry."

"Miss Tennouji wait –"

But Shion had already closed the door.

"Well, that wasn't a very nice prank. Come along, Miya, let's see the toilet room."

The comfort room is located at the end of the long hall. The mother and the daughter enter the room, admiring the clean tiles and the showers. A young girl, much smaller than Miya and Shion exits one of the stalls.

"Hello!", she skips merrily towards the mother and the child, "Do you happen to have tissue paper with you?"

"Why yes, my good child." The old woman looks through her purse for her tissues.

"Good, cause I kind of forgot to bring some along with me before I took a dump.", she extends her hands which are covered and dripping with creamy, yellowish 'faecal material'. Some of it falls on Miya's shoes. The mother instinctively pulls her daughter backwards and angrily scolds the girl. Just when they were about to exit the toilet room, a tall figure walks eerily up to them. Her legs are covered in blood. Her pupils are dilated. Her hands are stiff, twisted, dripping with blood. She walks up to the mother and the child as she chants in a voice dreary with death: "Napkins...I need Napkins..."

Then the girl from the toilet walks out and her pupils too are dilated: "tissues...give me your tissue papers..."

The mother and the daughter shriek and try run for the stairs. But the dorm's residents corner them, reach out of for them with their hands while chanting: "One of us. One of us. One of us."

The two push the crowds away and tumble through the stairs. They thrust themselves out into the door where the landlady is waiting for them with a box of cookies. She helps them stand up and offers them a glass of water, but the mother declines, saying: "I'd rather slit my own neck than let my daughter stay for a night in this cesspool!"

"What the fuck?", the landlady asks as she watches her clients walk away.

"Kazama, stop using your ability. is going to confront us now."*

"Roger that, Shion."

Shion smiles in contentment as she hears the landlady's angry ascent towards their rooms. She pulls out the batteries out of her walky-talky, and then she places the device under her futon.

"Well, there goes another dissatisfied customer. I don't understand. I didn't hear any ruckus up here and yet they left in such fuzz. Makes me wonder if you little brats did something to them with your circus tricks!", the landlady announces to the residents like a wounded lion.

"Now why would we do that, ma'am? We like making friends.", Shion pipes up from her room.

The landlady's face reddens in her anger. With her hands on her waist, she marches towards Shion's room and pounds on the door with her heavy fists.

"Kuga? Tennouji

No answer.

She kicks at the door with all her might but the door does not bulge.

"**KUGA? TENNOUJI?"**

"Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin", Shion replies in a sing-song voice.

"I know that you little **bitches** had something to do with this. That's the third customer this month and I swear, if I ever find out what you little punks are doing to drive my customers away, I will massacre you! I will kick you out of this dorm then massacre you!"

There is no response. The landlady is assured that Natsuki isn't in the room since her shouting had not been met with an equally ferocious lambasting of her mole and the constant rising of dorm fees. '_It is Shion', _she says to herself somewhat gratefully. Natsuki spares her no mercy, Shion pays her no heed, but she prefers the latter because it was, for her, a lesser evil.

She presses her ear against the door. _'This is hopeless'¸_ for by now Mozart's Rune Sanft is playing in the air, and she can hear Shion singing in her horrible 'Soprano voice'. She shakes her head, massages her temples and descends the stairs.

As soon as she leaves, the girls burst out of their doors and celebrate their success.

**Kazama's ability enables her to create an invisible wall that blocks sounds waves, preventing noise from escaping a certain area. This is why the landlady did not hear the re-enactment of the "Night of the Living dead" upstairs.


	3. Chapter 3

For fireandrain, whose dreams are reality and whose reality are dreams, and Madhattess who loves music as much as I do, perhaps even more.

**

* * *

**

**SLEEPER'S WAKE**

7 – lovely- a.m. and I'm sittin' here under the open window in my room, looking not so loverly and wishing that the coffee the girls brought for this wretched dormitory wasn't so bitter. Poor devils; clambering down the stair like stampeding rhinos. Too afraid to be late for school; not realizing that men become masters only when others choose to be slaves. I choose coffee over a grade deduction, thank you. A little trip to the detention hall isn't so bad especially when you've missed a good night's sleep or two. I slept precisely at 02: 31: 45 am, and woke up at exactly 5.

Natsuki is still in the bathroom, gorging herself with vanilla shampoo and what else. She has a hundred and seven concoctions just for her armpit and god knows how many more she has for her hair. I mean, good grief, what's the point of smellin' so swell if you're going to end up as soggy as a gym sock later?

One of the benefits of living with Miss Kuga is that you'll learn how to wake up on your own. Your body clock will adjust to Natsuki's schedule. You gotta wake up early before her so that you can take a bath first. Otherwise, you won't get to bathe at all. Vanity is her favourite sin so to speak.

After an hour and a half of nonstop showering (I suppose), she steps outside; fog following her. A tower is wrapped around her head like a turban. She struts out of the bathroom like an underwear model.

"Sea witch," I says; she smiles, acknowledging how the name fits her like a glove, "Squeaky clean now, aren't we?"

"As always", here she begins to dry herself.

"Prepping ourselves for lovey-dovey, ei?"

"Shut up, Shion. I'm not in the mood."

I laugh as I throw a ball of paper at her, "You're never in the mood for anything except...that thingy" and ere' I began to make that 'implicit' smile.

"What are you talking about, fox-face?"

"I ain't stupid, and I ain't slow. My prescription might be high, but trust me when I tell you: I can see right through you, like lightning cutting through a stone."

She doesn't respond. I knew she wouldn't. Natsuki is a horrible liar. "You're messing with the kaichou. You're messing with Fujino and you know she can't be trusted!"

"Oh for pete's sa- No! I am not! We're just good friends!"

"Then why were you mumbling eerie things in your sleep?"

"I don't even remember my dream.", she says as she rolls her eyes. Did I mention that Natsuki is a horrible liar?

"Something along the lines off: get off, Shizuru and I'm not gonna sit on top of you anymore, unless you have a fetish for naming horses after her! But that doesn't even explain the get off part."

She slams her comb into the drawer. She lets loose her long hair. It is darker and dripping with wetness. She grumpily puts on her school uniform. First the skirt, then the white blouse, and then her jacket.

"Peeving nut-case", she says as she passes me. That small circle of baby powder on her forehead is distracting.

"I'll see you at lunch, Natsuki!"

BLAM! The door closes and I'm alone again. Not to worry, the furniture will keep me company.

Tennouji. Tennouji, Shion. I'm well aware that my bust size isn't big enough for me to land a leading role in some crazy story. So please, loves and loveys, bare with me. It's not like I get to steal the spotlight every day.

I was born in a little city. It's had its taste of the complexities of urbanization, but it's still provincial. There, you can still see old fishermen blessing their boats with incenses on a daily basis along with old bald Buddhists who preach on a daily basis about Naraka. There, oaks outlast time. There, marshes reached above one's knees. There, mountains remain testaments to the glory days of sword making and fan dancing.

There's a little story in my family about how the local priest accidentally lost my name plate in the nearby shrine. This was considered bad luck for me and for my family. When weeks later, the priest's body was found floating lifelessly in the nearby river, the 'bad luck' was confirmed. I was a curse or somebody had cursed me. Either way, it's still not good.

This story really makes a great tell-tale. But, because of the supposed invisible cloud of bad luck floating over my head thanks to this clumsy priest, I'm not allowed to tell it to anyone. It's a secret in my family. Anywhoo, family reunions were beyond tolerable for me. My aunts knew me only by one all-encompassing adjective: "Oh look, there's little Miyabi. That one really takes from our side! Oh! Look he has his mother's eyes! Ah, it's strong Hitose – look at his broad shoulders! Oh...It's the cursed one."

I lived a fairly normal childhood talking to inanimate objects. The first inanimate object I spoke to was a paper lantern. Gifu is known for its paper, the Mino Washi, and my family makes paper lanterns and fans out of this special paper to sell in the market. Now this particularly old paper lantern, which my aunts look up to as the 'model paper lantern' asked me, "Have you seen my lover?" of course I didn't know who she was or who her lover was so I said, "no". To which the paper lantern replied, "But he told me he'd come back for me when the war is over. Please see to it that he knows I'm still waiting for him".

I never forgot that paper lantern. She had a gentle woman's face; forehead wide dark hair flowing, eyes downcast all the time, lips cracked from weeping.

My father thought it was just normal for me to talk to inanimate objects. So I thought so too.

...

Until, of course, I reached the age of six and everything – not everyone – was still talking to me. This conundrum of seemingly endless murmurs ceased after my uncles took me to the shrine to be blessed.

When I was seven, sea salts chased me into insanity. They wouldn't stop talking about how carelessly fishermen caught barnacles beneath their boats, of the journeys of the fishes from the deep south to the shallow oceans north, of the restlessness of the waters, of the monsoons and the tides, of the birth and death of molluscs, and the clitter-clatter of clamps, of the corals unseen beneath white sands, of their loves and losses and lives. I told them, "Shut up! Leave me alone!" But they would not. Like the ceaseless churning of foam and wave and wave and foam, they refused to cease their muttering. Day and night I tasted nothing but salt and foam, and felt nothing beyond restlessness.

Now of course, like any good parent, my mother, father, grandparents and aunts and uncles were quite worried. They had two hypotheses: one, it was the fucking curse. Two, I was psychotic. They were both highly plausible. I recall throwing myself on my mat and crying, "Oh I'm cursed! Cursed!" my father comforted me, "There, there, we'll go the brain doctor and ask him to cure you." And of course, as a kid I knew what Brain doctor meant so I began to cry, "Oh papa! I'm crazy! Oh!" then my aunts came over and said, "It's just a bad curse, darling". So yeah, it went on rhetorically: "Oh! I'm cursed!", "Something isn't just right about your brain" "Oh! I'm crazy!" "No, you're cursed" "Oh! I'm cursed" "We'll take you to the brain doctor" "Oh! I'm crazy!" "No, you're cursed"

As if any of the two was a good thing. I and my family are bad at comforting each other, obviously.

"Not to worry", my grandfather said (he was the old sage in our clan), "Both can be remedied." My father thought a psychosis was the best solution, but my aunts argued that a blessing or two wouldn't hurt anyone. So they came to a compromise: shrink in the morning, temple at night. So my youth was torn apart between science and religion.

My father took me to the shrink. I can't remember his name; all I remember is that I hated him. Hated the way he studied me as a scientist would observe the heart of a dissected frog; counting each passing heartbeat with a timer, sketching the purple nerves, tracking the movement of chime across the abdominal planes towards the intestinal trails. Bloody revolting and heartless. I wanted to throw up shit at his table. He wasn't old, as I had hoped. Old things have a way of explaining the world in an understandable way to me.

Anywhoo, we had loverly conversations – me and his couch. I never told anyone that I knew exactly what pornographic horrors this doctor he was capable of committing. His couch told me so. He had a habit of sending pretty looking patients into a bizarre trance and then masturbating over them while they were unconscious. Anywhoo, that was the morning therapy, lovelies. The evening part consisted of walking to the shrine in a white yukata and getting purified on a nightly basis – that is to say, getting doused in freezing cold water in the middle of a cold, freezing night. I squealed sheepishly for my arse, yes.

I figured that I was somewhat beyond help. I met this girl at the psych ward who had a major anger management problem. Really major. She almost killed someone when she was four all because he stuck straws in her pigtails. Imagine that. Anywhoo, she was beyond help too but she got out. How? Ya asks me. I'll tell you how. She learned to control herself, or rather, find some other way or other object to exert her anger on. One day, we were sipping on potato soup that the nurses made for us. Unfortunately, most unfortunately, the nurse forgot to put bread crumbs in her soup. She went like, "Where are my breadcrumbs?" the nurse didn't answer. I said, "Here, have mine." She said, "No, that's not the point. Where are my breadcrumbs?" For whatever logical reason that they didn't give her breadcrumbs, she got so angry that when the nurse left, she pounded her head with the empty bowl of soup (which was ceramic) and began stabbing her left thigh with her silver spoon while growling, "WHERE ARE MY FUCKINNGG BREADDCARRUMBBBSS?"

Anywhoo, the point is that she got out.

The shrink stopped when one day I said, "Hey, you know I'm not hearing voices and seeing strange things anymore". He was rather disappointed at this actually. Not the reaction you'd expect from a shrink. I thought he'd jump over his seat and chant something along the lines of, "Oh! You're cured! Thank goodness! I'mgreatI'mgreatI'mgreat" but no. Lord almighty, the man looked sad. He did tell me that he'll keep the journal of horrible fairytales of misery that I told him. The temple part ended when I caught a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE cold. Science and religion were rocks charging at each other, and I was stuck in between. And I got fucking crushed.

Remember what I said about just going with the flow of something you can't get rid of? So I learned one day, after cleaning our attic, that there was some way to control these voices and images that I heard from an antique samurai sword that my grandfather didn't even know he had. Now this old sword told me that I wasn't hearing random voices or seeing random things. I was actually seeing memories, traces of history left or strong emotions on objects and places and such. Things and places remember, ladies and gents. So the next time you're going to jerk off in some fire hydrant or in some empty room, think again. Spare me from your horrible secrets.

That's when I learned to love my ability. I went to museums. Gifu is covered with museums. I would place my hands against the cold glass that protected objects which hold memories as dearly as one cherishes a lover, and warm memories came crashing in. I came to know places, faces beyond my time and far, far away from my home. I savoured the death of the great samurais, felt Lord Nobunaga's sword plunge deep into my gut, had my own taste of a maiden's lips, and felt the fear of torture creep slowly into my samurai heart. For a moment I was a woman who had lost her brother to the cold winter of 1914, and then a Russian vase collector whose carriage was ran down by rebel arrows.

I went towards an aisle lined with old instruments. There was a koto. I had barely touched it when the memories came rushing in so quickly that reality became a blur. They were so many, I felt as if I would drown. Then I tried to control it. I concentrated. It was my mind against the mind of a hundred dead men. My own memories and sanity against a hundred more. My vision was starting to dim and the faces of a hundred people, the places that they had all seen, the songs that the instrument had played were all in my head. I felt like a fly whose vision was multidimensional. It was like searching for the stop button on a movie player.

Then...I found it.

**Stop.**

I open my eyes. It was red.

* * *

So red.

It was 1947. The Americans had penetrated our country's defences. Many of the civilians had resorted to killing themselves and their families out of fear and pride. But many also resorted to pleasing the American troops.

"So red..." I thought. Where was I? I started to panic. Then the redness moved away. You wanna know what it was? It was someone's fucking eye. It was a woman. She was looking at me – or rather, through me. That's when I realized that I was crouched against some huge door and she was peering through the keyhole behind me.

"Sorry", I said as I moved away. She didn't hear me. She couldn't hear me or see me. Then I remembered that she was just someone's memory after all – or something's memory rather.

I looked behind her. I saw it - the Koto. We were in a dark room and the faint light seeping through the keyhole she was peering at was our only source of light. I could feel it though. I could feel her nervousness. I could see her breathing uneasily. Her shoulders rose and fell. "I can do this", she whispered.

"Yes, you can!" I said. She couldn't hear me. It was pointless but I couldn't help it.

Then some voice boomed from nowhere: "And now let's welcome the very lovely", insert drum roll here, "Nagashiya the Queen of Strings!"

And then as if a god had just created the sun, there was light all over us. She took her Koto. It glistened as if it was happy. Instantly we were onstage, in front of a huge crowd of American soldiers who were being served sake by horribly dressed pseudo geishas. I was about to run back towards the backstage but then I realized, people couldn't see me. Everything was a memory. What was happening was just a memory, the koto's memory.

Then I got a good look at the woman. She was very beautiful. She had a soft provincial look, a sort of humble prettiness that you can't stop looking at. Her hair was a shade of brown – a light auburn – which was tied neatly. She was wearing a dark blue kimono with crane and red flower prints. The American soldiers – rowdy sons of bitches who were obviously there for her face, breasts, and hips – hooted and slapped their thighs as she bowed properly before sitting down on the centre stage.

* * *

She began playing. Her fingers gracefully dancing across the strings like swans landing on starlit ponds; barely breaking the surface of the water.

"Sa-sa-sakura, spring has come and you've returned", she began. It was a folk song. I know it well. It's quite famous here in Japan.

"Fare not from me again, Sa-sa-sakura."

It was captivating. Her playing was sheer genius.

Then she played another folk song, Shoujo na Shonai. "Long drawn out to see the world, the girl from Shonai has now returned. Ara-ara-ya, what sorrow."

Someone from the crowd yawned loudly.

That song ended, and she began to make a strange beat on her strings. It was an unfamiliar tune to me. It was sort of a ragtag tune. Then the crowd stirred and whistled and some boys shouted, "Yeah!"

"In orden days a garimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, Gad(u) knows. Anything goes.", and I later on learned that she was singing a Cole Porter tune called "Anything Goes".

Anywhoo, everyone loved it. It was a song that everyone seemed to know so they began to sing too.

"If dariving fast cars-u like, if Mei Westu-like...Then nobody will opos!"

I felt something strange as that song went on. I was melancholic, miserable in fact. The Koto was miserable. It hated playing Cole Porter tunes. When the woman played Sakura and the Shoujo no Shonai, it was so happy. But its mood changed automatically when she began to play the foreign song.

I wondered why. I still do sometimes. I suppose it's because...It felt unfulfilled. It had specific purpose, or a specific music it knew it was designed to play...I guess it felt a slave to this – this foreign music which was being imposed on it by the audience – I don't really know. I have this other theory: maybe it's also a reflection of its owner's feelings. Things, objects, places are very utilitarian existentialists, you see ladies and gents.

Her number ended and she stood up, made a parting bow and left the stage. I followed her, but I took one last disgusted look at the crowd when someone shouted, "Take yer damn kimono off, pretty!"

The manager handed her a few coins and a small bag of rice. She asked, "This is all?"

"This is all," he answered sadly.

"I understand" she put a hand on his shoulder. The old man shrunk. "You're a good man. Thank you."

She put the Kyoto in her furoshiki bag and they parted ways. We walked towards the street and I finally got a good glimpse of wherever the hell we were a while ago. It was a classy looking traditional opera house where some kabuki plays were held – or at least it used to be a classy opera house. A part of its brick roof had been blasted away, and its blurred signboard, a long tarpaulin covered whatever was originally the name of the place. The tarpaulin read, "Welcome, Americans! Sake, beautiful girls, and good entertainment just for you! Come one, come all!"

So we walked across the ashy streets of whatever town or city this was. I wanted to ask all the faceless people we passed but yeah, I can't. And by the way, they were literally 'faceless' because the Koto can't remember what they looked like. Some random strangers had faces on, but everyone was mostly just a plain stretch of facial skin.

We reached her house, a little wooden house overlooking the beach. "I'm home", she announced as she took her wooden sandals off. You know, funny thing is I took my rubber shoes off too and followed her inside the house. I wasn't used to walking within a memory then. I realized later on that I must've been acting really stupidly in real life.

Her house was empty. I don't know if she lives with someone else and that person just went away for a while or if it's a funny habit of hers to say, "I'm home" even if she lives with no one else. She put her Kyoto down, untangled her hair; her bangs fell all over her face prettily. She took a clean, moist rag out of one of her tea cabinets and began cleaning the Koto. It was happy again. It smiled. Or rather, we smiled together. It loved the woman and the woman loved the koto. In the process of cleaning the instrument, she pricked her finger on one of its sharp pegs. It bled. The koto was very, very sorry. I felt its surprise and sorry-ness rip through me like a bitch. Seriously, it stung a bit like a hurt-burn.

"You bad, bad girl," she told the koto and gave it a smile. And the koto was happy again. So happy in fact, that I felt tears of joy roll down from my eyes. I wiped my spectacles clean.

Then it dimmed.

I was fast forwarding through the plethora of memories that the koto held.

"STOP!" I recall myself shouting this.

Then it stopped.

I was in an empty street. I didn't know what date it was or where I was. A young boy was running towards me with an empty basket. He passed right through me as if I was but air. Then more people came running towards me. A lot of men and woman passed right through me. It felt weird because I couldn't feel anything at all but I knew and saw that people were passing right through me as if I didn't exist at fucking all. I had to remind myself again and again that I exist and these people used to exist.

Then I saw the woman. She was part of the running crowd. And I began to run too. She was carrying the koto in a large sack. We ran, ran, ran like animals towards a shipyard. Waiting for us were four young Japanese officials who screamed at everyone to form two straight lines. It then occurred to me that these people were dying to leave the fucking island for whatever grave reason. They obeyed reluctantly and started waving their grey tickets in the air.

The officials began to segregate those who had tickets from those who didn't have tickets. A lot of those who didn't have tickets protested and fought back, but they were pushed away from the gates by the officials. A lot of mothers began to cry and begged for the officials to take the baby with them, "At least my son, please. Please, just my son", one of them pleaded. It stung my heart.

"No, no, no." The official whisked her and her children away.

Amidst this chaos, I looked for the music player. I began to slip right through the faceless people in line. They were near; I knew it because I somehow could feel the koto's presence.

Then we came face to face. Her eyes hazy with despair, her hair wild in the wind. She didn't have a ticket.

Someone grabbed her free hand. It was the old manager of the entertainment house she workedat.

"Take mine," he said as he slipped his crumpled ticket into her hand.

She protested and called out to him. I can't remember his name. It was...Ha-hai...Haito? Haiken? Baiken maybe? Shit, I'm sorry. Anywhoo, she tried to give him back the ticket but he quickly stepped out of the line and dashed back towards his theatre, and she was being pushed forward by the frustrated people behind her. Her lips quivered as the old man's figure disappeared from her vision. The koto felt very sad too. But she held back her tears.

She was only five people away from the entrance when suddenly a plane skidded through the sky, leaving behind it a trail of blood coloured smoke. It exploded in the air, and what was left of it fell on some of the houses in the city behind them. So everyone began to panic. It was crazy. They were stampeding. They were going to die, everyone knew this. The woman watched as the theatre's roof burst into flames. The plane's burning wing had fallen on its roof. Horror was apparent on her face.

More planes came, bearing on their bodies blue stars – the symbol of the Allies. The city was being bombed. Gunfire was everywhere. Like a pebble that had fallen into a gushing river, she was being pulled and pushed in and out of the line. Luckily, one of the officials caught her when she was about to fall and seeing her ticket; he whisked her into the ship. More people came in. The Koto was slightly damaged from all the pushing. It was in pain.

The ship's doors closed. People were screaming and crying and explosions and gunfire could be heard from outside. It was as if hell was just outside. There was so much suffering and crying and anger. The people outside were pounding on the doors. The woman covered her ears with her hands and said a little prayer. The koto was crying too.

It was so overcrowded inside the ship; people were almost kissing each other. But that didn't matter then. Nothing else mattered save for the fact that they got in the ship. The woman began to climb up to the deck, I followed her. Then it began to move uneasily. The captain was obviously also in a state of panic. The ship braved the waves and the fiery sky.

We reached the deck. A lot of people were also gathered there and they were crying as they watched their island burn with the fires of war. She watched too, but she didn't cry. She just took her koto in her arms and cradled it, as a mother would to comfort her child.

Then as if things couldn't get any shittier, there was a loud noise from below and the ship was rocked by something.

"We're hit!" one of the sailors on board cried.

"That's just the first one, there are more coming."

From a distance, I saw a few American cruisers.

"Mow them down! Mow them down!" cried the men on board. They were so angry, so thirsty for revenge. The woman moved away from the stairs for fear of falling.

Our ship fired back with its cannon. It barely hit one of the cruisers.

A sailor said, "This ship isn't built for that kind of thing! We should not have fired back!"

"But they already fired at us", the woman spoke out. The sailor looked at her. He was dumbstruck.

I felt cold. So cold. I forgot that this was all just a memory. I thought I was going to die too. Not surprisingly, the ship was hit by something again from below. It rocked and swayed wildly against the waves. People on board were screaming. Then two fighter planes hovered above us. The captain raised a white flag.

BOOM! Came the first bomb. It didn't explode, but it broke through the ship's hull. Then we were hit again from below. I suspected that it was a torpedo because it came so quietly and yet so strongly. I mean, the cruisers just stood there as if they were just watching sinisterly and knew that we were going to get it.

BOOM! Came a second bomb. People began to cry. The ship rocked, the ship rocked so much a lot of people were thrown out of the ship. The woman hugged the steel wall behind her. BOOM! That one exploded and sent a few people flying like hot and crispy pieces of popped shrimp into the air. Flare and smog was everywhere. The ship was on fire. The woman fought against the flames blindly. I followed her. I stepped on fire, unburned. I sniffed the smoke, un-suffocated. I felt godly and yet so utterly helpless.

Then another bomb fell. BOOM! And the ship was split apart. We all fell, fell, fell into the watery hell below us. The woman screamed and I reached for her flailing hands while shards of metal and steel flew around us like confetti. Other people were also falling; some into the water, some into the fire. I fell into the fire and watched someone get barbequed in front of me; his or her figure melting into the metal and his or her mouth open in prayer. I waded away into the murky waters and looked for the woman. I saw her head bobbing up and down. She seemed drunk with ship oil and sea water. She was reaching for something – the koto which was floating in front of her. I swam towards her. And at this point she began to cry. Her bright features twisted with intense sadness and she cried. Cried. The koto was screaming for her as it began to sink.

"Don't" she weakly said as she swam towards it with whatever strength was left in her.

But it did sink and she swallowed a large puff of air and dived. She plunged in and followed the koto as it sank, sank, sank. Her silver kimono flapped elegantly and she looked like a koi gracefully dancing within the water. Her fingers played with the waves as if they were solid strings built to make music and the bubbles with their indigo hue seemed to be floating musical notes. At last, she reached for it. The koto was so happy when she took it in her arms. I watched, as if I was floating on air. I felt like a blue alien.

The woman was smiling too. It is a thing of beauty which I will never forget, this memory that I walked into. As she and her koto began to sink deeper into the ocean, with face serene, eyes closed in sweet meditation, lips slightly parted; she began to play. The faint melody of the koto was bubbly and all the more beautiful. Her pliant fingers swam across the strings. Then she began to sing too. She was like a siren. Never in my lifetime will I see someone drown so beautifully again. The koto was so very happy.

The song ended.

She smiled as the koto slowly slipped away from her arms. She did not bother to reach for it. The koto began to wonder why. It tried to cry out, but its master was not responding. Why? it began to cry again. Her arms were raised elegantly as if she was a beautiful shadow puppet dangling on a pair of invisible strings. The Koto sank deeper into the ocean. I was sinking too, I guess because everything was beginning to get darker. The koto was crying. From its vision, the woman was slowly fading.

A triangular silhouette was floating above the woman, and sunlight slowly probed through the still waters; the koto sank deeper and deeper into oblivion.

Stop.

I was in my room again. The museum curator said I acted as strange as a possessed child before fainting. I knew I needed more practice. But at least I already knew that there was some way to control my powers. The museum, from then on, became my playground and dojo.

There, I perfected my abilities. I felt rather special. One in a million, as that sappy song goes.

Until, of course, I got to Hoshinomoya Academy and met this girl who can will her energy into a makeshift pistol and shoot energy beams that can freeze a man's soul. Now, I ain't so special anymore.

* * *

"Have you seen Natsuki?", I ask one of her classmates. They says she didn't even attend class. Then where did she run off to?

Seriously, she's too touchy sometimes. I was just kidding. Well okay, I wasn't kidding but Natsuki can really be a prick sometimes. She's the kind of person you either love or hate. She is so Byronic.

I went to the cafeteria and looked for Kuga, but I found only Kiyone.

So here I am, sitting, thinking if I have every right to be annoyed at Natsuki's touchiness or if I really was being too nosey for my own good. Honestly, I can't stand it when I offend people when I'm not at all trying to be offensive. I was just trying to tell her that Shizuru was trouble. I don't really like her. I don't know why. I get bad vibes from her. We've never really been...properly introduced and I've never really looked her in the eye.

Ya know, I believe eyes are windows of the soul. Okay. That sounded sappy. But yeah, I really do believe in that. I've never really been in a close proximity with Fujino Shizuru. I –

"Aren't you hungry, Shion?"

It's Kiyone. She's one of the most comforting people in the world. Sure, she can be a bit slow sometimes and a bit dumb, but she's honest. I think that's what counts. A lot of shit-brained people pretend to be smart, and a lot of smart people don't speak up for fear of looking dumb or because they're apathetic or whatever. Honesty is a great virtue, if ya ask me.

"No, thanks."

"Where's Natsuki?"

"Oh. Well...Kiyone, we had a bit of a rumpus this mornin'."

She takes a large juicy bite from her pork tonkatsu.

"What happened?," she asks; her mouth puffy with rice and meat.

"I –" How do I explain what happened without exposing Natsuki's dirty little secret. "I was being nosey about her not coming home early for five straight days."

"What was keeping her up?"

Now I can't say 'studies' because that would be a big, fat lie. Kiyone isn't that close to me and Kuga but she does know that Natsuki isn't a prim and proper schoolgirl. "Target practice."

"Oh", she says; sipping on a box of fruit juice.

"Shion was just worried. You need not feel bad about yourself."

Yeah, that's right. I was worried about Natsuki. Worried. Selflessly so. Did I mention that Kiyone is a great comforter? So unlike me and Natsuki.

"I was"

"Why don't you go find her?"

4:15:07 precisely. I had plenty of time to kill. Why don't I?

"I don't know where she is."

"Have you tried Takeda?"

"Yeah, I told him to meet me up at the garden this afternoon."

"Be careful, Shion. Want me to stick around to keep you company?"

"Don't you have anything else to do?"

"I have some paperwork. But!" she pushes her empty plate away and gives me an assuring smile, "Shion's safety is what counts the most!"

Really, you gotta love Kiyone for her honesty.

* * *

**Takeda.**

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hate this chum. Natsuki doesn't hate him but his persistence can be very, very annoying. On top of that, he isn't very punctual.

Now time is not just gold for me. Time is a diamond, a huge diamond, an irreplaceable treasure. I ain't got plenty of it. People don't realize how much a minute or even a microsecond costs until they've seen someone's memory come to life. When my grandfather died, I was devastated. I loved him. I still touch the little pocketwatch he gave me for my twelfth birthday. I still do.

I'd sit back and watch a twelve year old me and dear old grandpop sitting on our old tatami mat in my house in Gifu. He smelled of old spice and the whole room smelled of old spice. I'd rewind that scene again and again and again in an attempt to relive even just one beautiful minute of that perfect moment. I wanted to trade places with my old self so that I can once again touch grandpa's hand when he hands me over the pretty little yellow box he wrapped just for me. I want him to tell me – me - not the memory of me, "Happy birthday, Shion. This is for you. Remember, time waits for no man. We are not precious to time, but time is precious to us."

Every moment is fleeting. I didn't know what he meant by that then. I know it now too well.

"Shion?"

"It's nothing. I just remembered something."

"I have this funny question to ask you."

"What is it?" god, my eye is itching. Let me just take off these darned glasses.

"Do you think that objects will also remember you? I mean, maybe someone with psychometry will one day place his hand against something that you've touched and see for himself that another person with psychometry was here. I mean," she laughs, "am I making sense?"

"G-go on, I get what you're saying."

"I mean...yeah, will objects and places remember you too?"

"Yes, they will."

I can hear footsteps now.

From a distance, I can see him. There are four of them from the Athletics club. The tallest one, whose name I still do not know, is Takeda's right hand man. Takeda walks in a very gallant way, like a Samurai, in proper posture.

"You're late."

"My apologies."

Kiyone is nervous. I know she is. She always is. She doesn't hide it.

"Takeda, where's Kuga?"

The question, "Have you seen Natsuki?" would've been very awkward. If he was hiding Natsuki, then it would've given him a chance to act really innocent about it. If he wasn't, he'd be worried. And I'm feeling like Sherlock Holmes right now. I needed to ask accusingly, not dumbly.

"I have no idea. Isn't she your keeper?"

"Watch it", Kiyone warns as she takes a good step forward, chest out and hands on her waist like General Touga. She is an awesome comrade.

"Look, Musashi" I love Takeda's name although I can't tell him that. It's so fucking historical. And he does Kendo. It suits him all the more. "I've been here for hours like Kojiro Sasaki in the Battle of Gayru Isle. I expect a good answer from you or two, not a good mocking."

"I really don't know. I thought you were – I thought the reason you asked me to come here is because she was going to accept me."

"You dream too much", Kiyone laughingly says.

"Oh now whose mocking who?"

"You started it!"

"Easy, comrade, easy" I take Kiyone by the hand and pull her towards me. She never takes her eyes off of Takeda and he scowls at her courage.

I look at Takeda accusingly. He does seem...innocent. His eyes are also searching mine for any sign of me lying. I ain't lying and so is he.

"K-Kuga's missing?"

His eyes begin to water.

Great! Really, great! Natsuki and he should really hook up. They're both emotionally constipated.

"Yeah", I look away, "She didn't come to class at all."

"Why? What happened?" he sniffs and the men behind him all look down. Whether for shame or out of sympathy, I cannot tell.

"Well, Takeda, come here and I'll tell you."

He walks towards me. Perfect. Like lightning cutting through a stone, I reach for his neck and all at once his memories come flashing through me: His morning shower, the sausage and egg breakfast he ate that he accidentally burned because he accidentally fell asleep on the kitchen counter, him going to his locker and giving the picture of Natsuki, which he always keeps there, a chaste good morning kiss. I saw how his calculus teacher, Professor Tsudagiri, ridiculed him in class because he couldn't solve a simple math problem, how at the clubhouse he vented out all his anger on the old galoot by having a quick match with his rival. No Natsuki. None at all. He is telling the truth after all.

I let him go.

He staggers. His knees liquefy and he falls on the floor droopy eyed and drooling. His club mates are angry, understandably so.

"What have you done with him?"

"I raped him, what's your problem." Seriously, I'm now panicking all the more like a tramp that wasn't paid enough and just realized that her client didn't use a fucking condom and that he has AIDS.

Where is Natsuki? Takeda doesn't have her. Her classmate's haven't seen her. She's not at the dorm. She's –

"You're going to pay for this!"

"I don't have time for this junk." I says. Now I'm pissed. I have to get going now.

"Kiyone let's—"

Oh wow. Kiyone is teleporting from left to right, avoiding the punches of the tall guy. She lands a good kick on his groin and he falls on his knees. She kicks his mouth.

"I can't afford to have any more of these distractions!" I sidestep and sucker punch the guy charging at me. I cover his face with my hands and suck in his memories. It floods in: the warmth of his mother's breast, the painful, painful circumcision he had to endure as a young lad, the burdens of being born upright, the rejected love letter of his sweet youth –

"Stop! Stop! Stop it! It hurts! It hurts so much! Mommeee—" I let go. He drops, writhing. I sucked in too much.

You see, ladies and gents, when my psychometry is used on a biological organism, it produces a sort of electric shock. I don't know why, it just does. I first realized this when I killed my own hamster. Yes, I was a horrible child when I was eleven because I then knew how to control my abilities. I thought, "What must it be like to be an adorable furry little critter?" So I stroked its fur and absorbed its memories. I was enjoying seeing it have its first taste of its mother's milk, and feel its sorrow when it was separated from his family, then the pet shop – it felt like a prison camp for the poor thing – and then its first taste of pellets. When my mother called for supper, I slipped out of its head, and that was the only time that I realized that I had killed it. It had wept tears of blood.

Of course, I needed to prove my theory that my ability can be deadly and can inflict a damn lot of fucking pain and damage on living creatures. So I tested it on a few birds. Hate me if you will, but I did. And then I came here, to this Academy, and I got picked on by a fat twit who had superhuman strength in Judo class so I tested it on her. I zapped her to the point of ennui. She almost fucking died and I was laughing the entire time like an imp with a torture doll. I almost got kicked out for that. That was when I and Natsuki met – but that story, loves of my life, is for a different time.

Right now, ya see, I'm dodging kicks and punches and attempting to grab this bastard by the throat. Judo class was really helpful for me as my ability requires direct skin contact. Otherwise I'd just remember what the person's clothes remember. Judo taught me how to grapple, grab, and break a damn fall.

"Stop!"

Who the hell is – oh, it's Takeda. Great, he's awake now. I thought I had bedraggled him for a day or two.

"Stop, everyone, stop!", and his men immediately draw back and begin to console him.

"That wasn't very nice of you, Miss Tennouji, but I can - Ouch! my head...I understand."

He forces himself to stand up straight.

I look to my right. Kiyone has a bruise on her right cheek. Damnit, I am SO sorry for dragging you into this mess, Kiyone. I'm going to treat you to a movie sometime this week, I fucking promise.

"We'll try looking for her"

"I don't think she'll come out to you guys."

"Yes, but we'll try."

I didn't say thank you at all to Takeda and neither did Kiyone. We just walked away and so did they. It was beginning to get dark and Kiyone is dying to do her homework. We live in separate dorms. I'm still going to look for Natsuki. I phoned our dorm but Kazama said she wasn't there at all. I really, really am worried now. Her absence defies my logical thinking.

Anyway, I'm just going to walk Kiyone back to her dorm. We're almost there, just a few more pines and street signs to pass and – aha! Here we are. This place is really bigger than ours. I wonder if the land lady is nicer.

"I'm sorry, Kiyone. Really, I am. I'm gonna make this up to you, 'kay?"

"Hey, Shion, what are buddies for, right?"

We make our high-five slash pinky-swear and part ways.

"See you at school! Don't be late or you'll get detention again!", she says and I chuckle. She knows my notoriety and –

Wait.

Shit, shit.

That's genius! That's brilliant!

Detention. Student Council. Natsuki. Oh – Oh! That's brilliant!

"KIYONE, YOU'RE BRILLIANT!"

"I know I am!" She shouts back as she enters her dorm.

How could I have not thought of this earlier? Ugh!

**FUJINO, SHIZURU!**

* * *

"I cannot believe I'm actually going to have to go back to the student council to talk to that woman. I cannot believe this!", I says to myself as I run through the green fields of moist grass, all the way to the dirt path towards the school garden. Pines, pines, pines everywhere. Football field, Gate, corridor, hallway, high school building – Natsuki, I'm coming – the empty rows of crème colored classrooms, the demented looking science laboratories, hallway, locker room, faculty, and – damn, I'm so tired but I'm so near I can't stop and my heart is POUNDING with excitement. Why do I seem so certain? Why do -

'STUDENT COUNCIL ROOM'

I'm here. Standing in front of this door I've come to know as my torture chamber for a few semesters now. I'm sweaty all over. I feel like I'm going to find something unexpected. I think I'm going to find Natsuki and something else, and it's that something that's bothering me. Better knock first. Here goes.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Come in"

That accent, the almost singing like tune. It's her

The door creaks open and I step in. They've cleaned up already and it's a bit dark. I suspect that she's about to leave. The sky is a hazy red-violet now. Its 6:03 and people should be in their houses now. But what is Fujino still doing here?

"Ex'squeeze me, La Presidenta, but do you have un minuto?"

"Charming introduction, Miss Tennouji." she searches for me. Oh, where are my manners?

"I thought so." She smiles toothily.

Well I gotta hand it to Kuga. She has excellent taste in girls. La Presidenta really is a beauty – the kind of beauty that you don't see every day. She has that age-old elegance floating around her. She's a classic, a Mucha painting come to life with her brown, wavy hair and oval face. She has that humble provincial prettiness that one never gets tired of seeing, she has –

She has-

Red.

Red eyes.

...

"Yes, Miss Tennouji?"

I'm cold. I'm so cold. I think I'm going to shit ice cubes right now like a yeti.

I've seen her drown.

I know you. Oh. Oh! The sea salts are calling me again! The koto is playing in the air. Who are you? Wait, wait, I knew your name, I know your name, woman. I— I remember!

"Nagashiya."

"Pardon?"

"Nagashiya, Queen of Strings!"

"Miss Tennouji, I can't understand you."

She's worried about me. Oh my god. I have to...I have touch her. Just her finger and I'll know. I'll know it's you. The koto wants you! It has waited for you to come back for it for years and years and years since you lost each other in 1947. Nagashiya, it misses you! I know it's you! It's the same face! The same eyes!

I came back for the Koto days after that incident. The museum staffs were eyeing me suspiciously. I was embarrassed after I accidentally made myself look like a nut, but I had to see the koto again. It was still there of course; lying in waiting for its owner to return, for that mysterious woman to play it again with her pliant fingers. It longed to hear her sing again, to fulfil its purpose again. Only she can help it fulfil its destiny. Only through her can the koto sing beautifully again. It will play only for her. For her alone.

For her.

For the Queen of Strings who loved it dearly and who it loved so purely in return.

Before I left my home to study here in Hoshinomoya, I bid it farewell. I touched it, and it spoke to me of this longing that I now speak to you of, dear lovelies. I knew what it wanted, what it needed, what it was asking from me: bring her to me or bring me to Nagashiya.

And here she is! Nagashiya, it's you! Come home to your music!

"Miss Fujino."

"What's the matter?"

Wait, I have to be sure. I have to be sure. But...how do I touch her?

"Do you play traditional Japanese music?"

Oh shit, that was a stupid question. OF COURSE SHE DOES! SHE'S FROM KAN-FUCKING-SAI!

"Yes, I do." She has a puzzled look on her face. I can tell she's as curious as I am.

"May I know what instrument you play?"

"I play string instruments, Miss Tennouji."

Oh shit. Shit, I'm hitting the jackpot.

"Such as?"

"I play the shamisen and a bit of koto, and -"

"Koto?"

Grandpop, hug me for I am awesome.

"Yes. Why do you ask, Miss Tennouji?"

"I'm just curious, because I really love folk music. I thought that you would be interested in starting an ensemble with me."

I swear to all my ancestors, she speaks like Nagashiya. It must be Nagashiya.

"Oh. You play traditional music too? That's lovely."

"Well, yeah. I came from Gifu and that place screams tradition like a fiddler on a roof."

"And what instrument do you specialize in?"

"Well," Oh shit, I can't play anything to save my life. Does a whistle count? Oh dear me, I- "I sing."

"Interesting. I've never heard you sing before.", she puts a finger under her chin. She is obviously amused. She walks away from the window and takes two chairs from her side.

"That's because I never sang in front of you before." She places the chairs in the centre of the room.

"Please, sit."

"Thanks."

Once again I'm face to face with the woman I chased to her death six years ago. Funny how the past catches up with the present when you least expect it. She is studying me with her red eyes, I can tell. But I must not allow myself to be distracted. I have to find a way to touch her – in a very non-sexual way of course.

At this rate, I won't be able to touch her without grabbing her by surprise. And if I absorb her memories, I'll hurt her and that's hara-kiri. Well, like what that Cole Porter song said, "Anything goes."

"I am interested in this idea of yours. Our school has a marching band, a chamber orchestra, a choral, a music club, but no sankyoku. The lack of a salute to our own culture is also troubling me."

"I know what you mean."

"Ara. We share a sentiment. I'm glad I'm not alone."

"I'm really happy and excited about this! Here", perfect, just perfect. I extend an open hand to her, "Let's shake to it! Bandmate?"

She eyes my hand and smiles as she crosses her legs elegantly, like a swan folding its wings in after a vespertine flight.

"Before I say yes to you, would you mind singing for me?"

"Wha- why?"

"Naturally, if am to offer my talents to you, then you must first offer yours to me. You are the one who proposed to build a sankyoku, after all. It is common custom and proper etiquette among musicians."

I'm dead.

"Sing, please."

I'm dead.

"I have to know the quality of the talent of the person I'm striking a deal with."

MOTHER, FATHER, I AM SO DEAD. PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR BRINGING SHAME TO YOUR NAMES.

I stand up; eyes wide open and framed by my round spectacles, mouth puckered in preparation, arms to the side. I must look like an owl. If I remember correctly, you have to take air from the diaphragm. Good lord, why didn't I take voice lessons anyway? And why did I make that STUPID excuse of building a band? Darn it, I'm so fucking stupid!

What was the title of tha-that song from the Tale of Genji? What were its first lines? Oh screw this, here I go –

"After autumn passes, surely I will cut off the black hair that I'd let grow. Ahhara-ara-ra! When summer comes it's rain at dawn – ara-ra-ra- – oh shit, wait, wait, let me begin from start. I hit a wrong note." I hit all the wrong notes.

Shizuru looks at me and I know, I fucking know she is enjoying this torture. She has the 'I'm watching a hilarious slapstick comedy' look.

"After autumn passes, its rain at dawn – Oh crap. Wait, let me begin again."

Take it easy, Tennouji. You've had it worse. Take a deep breath. Good, good girl. Yeah, love the air, love the air. Okay, here I go again—

"After autumn passes, surely I will cut off the black hair that I'd let grow. Aha-a-ara-ara-ra! When summer comes its rain at dawn – ara-ra-ra -drawing close to you, I gather up the fragments."

Now that sounds better than the first. I continue:

"Without even giving the faintest hint of farewell, the sound of your feet suddenly cut off. Ooooh! The melancholic and beautiful white—" Shit, the note is too high for me, "WEEENTTTEERRRRRRRR!"

My voice broke into a shriek. Oh dear.

Is she laughing? Oh god, I hope not.

"You're done?" she's not. But she's smiling very, very widely, as one would when someone did something so hilariously stupid but you're polite enough to suppress your laughter. Fuck, I sound better when I fart than when I sing.

"That was m-my style, you know. I added some heavy metal type of singing to it." Why can't I shut up? Naga- I mean, Shizuru isn't stupid.

"Thank you. I'm afraid I can't say yes to you, Miss Tennouji. I'm very busy with my studies and with the student council."

"Okay, I know I don't sing. But I can be your talent-manager, right?"

She smiles. I am stupid, I know.

"Look, I know this sounds stupid and crazy, and I know it sounds like I just took this out of a mangga or a psychedelic movie or something, but y-you're – " how I put this, "I don't really know yet, but you might be a reincarnee of some woman who died in 1947 or – Look, it's like this – don't call the cops or—"

Why is she reaching for that sword behind her? – "Don't use that fucking sword on me, woman." Her smile slowly fades at my usage of the word 'fuck'. Well, better bashful than regretful. "There's a koto in the Gifu museum and you know I have psychometry, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so I can see memories of objects, places, and people. And Shizuru, you were in that memory." Or at least I think she is.

She blinks a few good times and then asks, "And? I'm sorry, but what am I supposed to do with all this information?"

What a fucking snob! But she's right, whatever will she do with what I just said, "Look, the koto misses you."

"The koto misses me. And I'm its historical owner. That's what you're saying?"

"Yeah, pretty much. That sums it up."

"Very well, supposing that you're correct and I really am that koto's owner, what do you want me to do?"

"It's not a question of what I want you to do but what the koto wants. It wants you to comeback for it."

"What do you think is wrong?"

What do I think is wrong? That made it sound like nothing is wrong. God, she sounds like my shrink.

"Well that the instrument wants its owner back."

"You don't even know if you're correct in your assumption.", she smiles again. Mockingly. "And I don't know any Nagashiya from my family. I don't think someone named Nagashiya is from my clan. It's a small clan, so we all know each other believe me."

"Please, Madam President", I'm trying to be polite here, woman "let me just...tap into your mind."

"You mean read my memories?"

"Yes, allow me to get lost in your inner nebulae, if you will."

"You're good with euphemisms, I like that. However...", she stands up and straightens her skirt, "I must decline."

"Please, please, please? With sugar and pixie dust on top complete with little munchkins and pepperminty chocolate truffles and—"

"No, Miss Tennouji. Please, we have to leave. It's getting late and I have to get back to my dorm. I believe you have to get back to yours too. It's getting dark."

How fucking disappointing. I really must be cursed. I'm going home...I feel as limp as a dying worm. I walk out of the room; literally dragging my feet. I feel like Napoleon who had just Waterloo.

"Shion."

"What?" I have no time for more distractions. I'm about to go down the stairs, can't you see that? "What do you want?"

"Just a little, alright?"

What?

"What?"

"I'll let you. But just a little."

I walk back – no I skip back to her as happily as a child who just got free candy.

"You don't say."

"Just a little."

"Of coursey. I promise. I won't cut through you like lightning."

"I trust you. I trust Natsuki's friend."

Oh! Speaking of which—

"Have you seen her?"

"Natsuki? No. I haven't see here all they long."

"Oh wow, so she's not here too?" Where the hell is she? But - oh! shizuru's memories. I'm so excited! I might be right. I know I'm right. I might tap into her subconscious too.

Shizuru leans against a wall. I told her too. The sudden jolt might surprise her and send her flying down the building so I had to make sure. I'm looking at her right now and how she's carefully leaning against the cold pavement and I'm reminded of Nagashiya leaning against the ship so that the bombs wouldn't get her and her koto. I swear, it really is her.

"Have you had anyone read your memories before?"

"No" why is this so uncomfortable? It's not like I'm killing a hamster again.

"This is going to hurt a bit. But I'll try my best, okay?" I take her right hand in mine. It is delicate with the tips slightly calloused. She really does play string instruments.

I close my eyes. "Are you nervous, Shizuru?" I smile.

"No." Liar.

Well okay, here it goes.

**Play.**

* * *

Red.

So red.

...

I'm somewhere in a little provincial town and it somehow feels like home. I look around. I'm in a study room. Well, I really am in a home. It's a traditional Japanese room. It pretty much looks like our house, only we had beige coloured shojis and these walls are white. The room is decorated with all sorts of ikebanas and origamis. Is this Shizuru's room?

"Mother! Mother!", a child's voice rings in my ear. It is soft and playful.

She rushes into the room. It is Shizuru. I am in Shizuru's childhood. She is adorable; red eyes bright like a new born star, cheeks puffy and pinkish like peaches, lips pouty like a bird's short beak.

"Mother?" she asks. Her southern accent is thicker in her childhood. I guess it must've somehow worn off a bit now because of her going to the North and getting used to other Northern dialects.

"Shizuru!"

I turn around. It is her mother. She is a carbon copy of her mother. Shizuru is going to age gracefully. I can tell by this older woman's face. However, her features are sharper, her eyes are fiercer too. Her hair is auburn with the white streaks of the ages. She is wearing a purple kimono. Goddamnit, hotness does run in the genes, ei Shizuru?

Shizuru runs towards her mother and hugs her. She is only waist high. How adorable. Mrs. Fujino pats her daughter's round little head.

"Did you study today?"

Shizuru nods.

The mother smiles, "What did you study?"

She raises a clenched fist and smiles toothily. "History" she raises her pink, "Math", she raises her ring finger, "Literature" she raises her middle finger, "Calligraphy" she raises her forefinger, "Ikebana"

The mother, with a solemn look on her face, claps and says, "Excellent. Let's hear a poem then."

At this moment, little Shizuru's eyes open a bit and her pouty little lip sort of quivers.

Her mother takes a pillow and sits on it so prim and properly she'd pass for a queen.

"Go on now. Mother's waiting."

She stands up straight and puts her hand in front of her as if she's holding a fan. I'm going to take my seat beside the mother. Shizuru deserves a good teasing after this. She is so fucking cute I could put her in my coffee instead of sugar.

Shizuru begins; her hand making circular moments; rising and cupping some invisible round object in her sky, "Though the purity of the moon –"

"moonlight.", Mrs. Fujino interrupts.

"Has silenced both nightingale and cricket,

the cuckoo alone

Sings all the night."

Shizuru ends and covers her face with her 'fan'.

"The white night, darling." Mrs. Fujino is obviously not pleased. "Again, Shizuru. This time, with more grace and get words right."

Shizuru nods; nervousness apparent in her features.

"Though the purity of the moon has silence –"

"Moonlight. Again."

Shizuru straightens up and begins again: "Though the purity of the moonlight has silenced both cricket and nightingale—"

"Nightingale and cricket. The bird comes first before the insect. Those are symbolic for grace and humility. Remember, grace always comes first. Now, repeat. This time, perfectly."

Shizuru by this time is shaky with fear. Her eyes are a bit watery.

"Though the purity of the moon has silenced both cricket and nightingale - "

BLAM. Her mother slams her fist on the wooden floor to cut her.

I stand up and shout at the woman sitting beside me, "SHE'S JUST A KID, LADY! QUIT IT, WILL YOU?"

"Moonlight. Moonlight." She reiterates coldly but without losing her poise. A tear rolls down from Shizuru's left eye.

"I'm sorry, mama."

"Again."

She exhales and resumes her graceful position. This time, she is determined to get it right.

"Though the purity of the moonlight

Has silenced both nightingale and cricket,

the cuckoo alone

Sings all the white night."

That was perfect. She's too good for a kid her age. But mother isn't pleased at all though. Mrs. Fujino's eyes are closed. Shizuru mumbles a pathetic: "I'm sorry, mama."

"You made too many mistakes. With your hands and the words – ah. My daughter, you lack grace too."

What is she like? Five? six? seven? I was in a psych ward when I was her age, but I wouldn't call my childhood unhappy. My aunts were crazy but they weren't narcissistic, perfection-obsessed Nazis.

Mrs. Fujino stands up. She leads Shizuru to the music room. They have enough instruments to make their own museum but they are all string and wind instruments. They must hate percussion instruments. There are also some Western violins here and there is a piano. I follow them meakly. In the centre of the music room, there's a huge black and white picture of the mother in her youth. She really looked like Shizuru a lot now, only she seems shorter and her hair is darker and, like I said, her features are sharper.

She takes her seat in the lonely little chair in the middle of the room and points to the koto on her right. Shizuru obediently walks towards it and begins to play some song. It is a sad tune and she really is good for her age. Her tiny fingers were waltzing across the board. She was already doing a hammer and a pizzicato when she was this young! She's a prodigy.

"Stop", what the hell is it this time? The kid was doing fine!

"That's ta-ta-ti-ta-then E minor then B flat, not E minor then A. Repeat."

So Shizuru obeys like a little marionette being programmed by some cold, unfeeling scientist. Bloody revolting.

"Stop"

"What the fuckery much, bitch?" I ask. I want to slap her. Of course she can't hear me and my hand passes right through her cheek. And Shizuru can't see me either, I mean, she is only remembering this WITH me. I won't be part of this memory of hers in afterwards.

"Again." This time, Mrs. Fujino opens her eyes. She stands up and walks towards Shizuru.

Shizuru plays again. I can feel her fear. She is afraid of disappointing mama. She has to be perfect. She has to be as perfect as mama.

"Stop. Again."

Shizuru plays.

"Stop."

Shizuru plays.

"Again."

Shizuru plays.

"Stop. Get away."

Shizuru does so with a bow. Mother sits down and begins to play the song Shizuru was playing. She is a master of the strings. She is a genius with the strings. I've never heard a more beautiful koto playing than –

Wait.

Nagashiya?

"Nagashiya?" I ask. She turns around, as if she heard me. But it ain't me she is looking at, she is looking at Shizuru who is in front of me. Shizuru is watching with amazement and adoration. Oh yeah, there's no Nagashiya Fujino. But I swear - oh wait, I look at the picture again. No, it's not Mrs. Fujino. It's really Shizuru who looks like that woman.

The song ends and Mrs. Fujino stands up and says, "Now you do it. Perfectly as I did."

Shizuru does so – or at least she tries to. Mrs. Fujino sighs in disappointment and walks out, leaving poor little Shizuru and her koto. But Shizuru doesn't stop playing. Her music gets louder and louder and she closes her eyes and lets her timid, stubby little fingers dance across the strings. Her playing becomes more beautiful as the song progresses; nearly as beautiful as her mother's - but not as perfect.

The song ends with a gorgeous roll of notes.

"It's A minor then D then C-G all are whole notes.", Mother's voices booms from somewhere.

Little Shizuru cries.

Her tears spatter on the koto's fret board. She bites her fingers as punishment. I feel horrible just watching all of this. She wipes her tears away with a little handkerchief.

She stares at the koto, and the koto stares back at her. She then presses her fingers down against the steel strings of the koto; so tightly that they reddened. And then she quickly slides her fingers on the string; making horrid squeaky noises reminiscent to that of a dying rat. Her fingers bleed in the process and she bites her lip down to fight away the pain. She has to be perfect. Determination burns in her eyes, I can see it; the flames within them more horrid than bomb explosions and cannon fire.

"Stop, Shizuru! Stop!", I reach out for her but my hand passes right through her. The blood on her fingers drip on the koto's body as she continues to slide them from across the fretboard. Isn't there a way to– I have to try at least!, "Stop! Shizuru! STOP!"

This is just a memory but I – I have to – "STOP! Shizuru, STOP!"

STOP

STOP

STOP

* * *

"Stop. Stop. STOP! Tennouji, stop!" I open my eyes.

Shizuru and I are on the floor, facing each other. She is slumped up against the wall and I'm on all fours. She is covered in cold sweat and her breathing is laboured. I'm a bit washed out too, you know. That takes a lot of mental and even physical strength, ladies and gents. Her eyes are closed and she is paled. I look at her hands. Her slightly calloused finger tips are red.

When she opens her eyes, I can see that she was angry. Really majorly pissed off at me. I know, yes, I know I saw too much.

"Get out", she tries her best to sound casual about it. But I can feel the venom of her words.

"I'm very sorry, Fujino." I really am.

"You must leave. Now."

I get up, but she is too weak, I think. I extend a helping hand at her but she slaps it away with the back of her right hand.

"Now, Miss Tennouji. Now."

I better run. Where are my glasses? Oh, here they are. I scamper towards down stairs like a rat being chased by a cat.

* * *

I had forgotten all about Natsuki back there. I had this funny feeling about going to see Shizuru but I still went to her. And yeah, shit happened. The things I do fer love...

So now I'm trudging up to my room and its eight fucking thirty, and the land lady had just given me an earful a minute ago and it just sucks that I'm too washed out to think o fa smart-ass comeback.

Screw Natsuki, seriously. She's old enough to know what she's getting into. I'm so tired, I swear, I'm finding it a chore to find my room's bloody keys now I—

Creaakk.

The door opens.

Natsuki?

I can't believe it.

It is her; she is brushing her teeth, preparing for bed. She is already in her pajamas!

"Where the hell have you been?" I ask as I push her inside and throw myself on my bed. I don't really want to know. I feel stupid enough already.

"Swimming at the beach. You pissed me off earlier this morning so I decided to take the entire day off and go for a nice, long swim. I beat my record, by the way. Hoo-hah!"

"Well you wore me out all day, nipple-brain!" My head is spinning from fatigue and I'm hurting so much "God, where are the aspirins?"

"Here", she says as she hands me the pillbox. I don't need water at all. I open up a pill and swallow it down like my pride. "Honestly, you're such a worrywart."

"Beats being as insensitive as you!" I bury my face into my pillow. I'm so sleepy, but I'm too pissed to sleep. GAH!

"Oi, at least take off your uniform or brush your teeth, you filthy little beast."

I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to say anything. Bitch.

"I heard from Kazama and Yuuki that you were looking for me."

"..."

"You didn't think I was at the beach? You know I love swimming."

"Then marry the sea!"

I hear her walk towards the bathroom. I hear the water gush out from the faucet. Then I hear the water die out. I feel the side of my bed sink a bit. Natsuki is sitting beside me and is smiling.

"I would if I could."

I'm dozing off now. Yay for sleep.

She stands up and walks towards the window. From our dormitory, one can actually see the sea. Natsuki opens the window and inhales the wonderful sea breeze. I secretly take it in too.

...

...

"Sa-sa-sakura...", she began in her deep voice.

Is she singing?

I raise my head and look at her.

She is singing! And it's that song –

"...Spring has come and you've returned. Slowly now, unfolding now, everything is being reborn."

Natsuki's singing is so solemn; her deep voice reverberates against the wind like a set of fine steel strings being plucked by expert hands.

"Fare not from me again, Sakura-ha..."

I see it in her eyes; the same look of the koto. Natsuki is a deep sea fish looking up at the sun.

And the sea salts are chasing me back to insanity.

.

* * *

P.S. Stay tuned for the next installment

THANKS TO MADHATTESS FOR THE CORRECTIONS!


	4. Chapter 4

The prompt was Dinosaurs, and here's just a short filler to what we're left with so far.

* * *

**POSTMODERNISM**

"I love skeletons", she tells me. I look at her, Fujino Shizuru and she is a wonder to behold.

Since last Tuesday, Shion has been rather 'uncritical' of her -which is actually convenient because the fox face is actually gifted in lambasting people! She's also started to listen to a lot of Enka and folk songs. Really refreshing after a month of enduring Maria Callas' and Lucia Popp's singing of "Fruhlingersteningmenen-something-something". And yes, I obviously am no fan of Opera.

"Why?" I ask. That's an odd statement for her. She likes to call herself a connoisseur of beauty who was in search of the greatest masterpiece that had come to life. That makes me blush all the time. I hate to admit me, but she does...make me feel pretty.

We're in the library's reserved section, facing each other. I'm sitting on a sofa and she's sitting on an old wooden stool in front of me. A ragged, old table is separating us from each other. Funny because the stool she's sitting on reminds me of Kindergarten. The teacher would make the dumb kid sit on the 'dunce' chair which is practically a tall stool similar to what Shizuru's sitting on right now. Shizuru is far from stupid though. She's a genius in a lot of aspects.

"Because!" she flips a page open and points at a dinosaur picture in the book she's reading "just look at them. They're the supporting structure of organisms and yet!"

"Yet?"

She closes the book and gives me her pretty little 'Eureka' smile before continuing: "They're sexless"

I take the book from her hands and get a good look at the dinosaur picture she's getting pumped over. It's a picture of a Velociraptor skeleton from the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. I'm looking at all its teeth right now and thinking that it can chew a man's head into a sloppy brain salad in an instant. Its spine is serpentine. It's pathetically shorts arms are positioned in a way that it looks like it's shooting an arrow from a bow.

"Well yeah, Shizuru. But girls' hipbones are wider than boys'"

She rolls her eyes in annoyance. I'm the only one who gets to see her bad and good sides. It's a privilege if you ask me.

"Alright, then can you tell if it's a girl or a boy?"

I read that the way to tell female skeletons from male skeletons is by looking at the hip bone's width. The female hipbone is wider than the male's to accommodate birth giving. I'm looking at it right now, and I really can't tell if it's a girl or a boy.

"Okay, so I can't. Sue me."

"Precisely!" She laughs timidly. I suppose now isn't the best time to tell her how beautiful she is and how much I want her to marry me because that's off topic. But I am tempted to. I love how she laughs in sheer delight. I love the purity of her joy.

"Without an external source which you can compare this particular skeleton to, you can't tell if it's male or female. Isn't that beautiful, Natsuki?"

I know that you're beautiful, Shizuru. But I... "I really don't know what's so beautiful about skeletons."

"I mean the concept of identity building through differentiation!"

"Tell me more." I love learning from her.

"You're you because you're you. Person B is Person B because he's different from you. We acquire identity through the ascription of what we deem as positive values and other things that we think are good in order to create an ideal identity. It's performatively constituted to some extent, you can say. I mean, look-" she gets up from her seat and seats down beside me. Suddenly the sofa is warmer and softer than it's supposed to be "it goes like this. In order to have a concept of the 'self', there must be a concept of the 'other'."

"Right"

She leans in closer, too absorbed in her thought to notice that she's breaching the distance that separates me from her – the I from the other.

"And it's funny because everything, all social relations have been built on the concepts of the feminine and the masculine. Society's framework is built on roles which are gendered by power. The dominant and the subordinate. When in fact! – " she laughs again "Skeletons are sexless. Someone who's no specialist in bones and their sizes wouldn't be able to determine if a skeleton's a girl or a boy. And even specialists use systems of measurement to determine the skeleton's sex!"

I can feel her breath on my face.

"And if I may add, only by comparing the hipbones of a male skeleton form a female skeleton will you be able to tell one from the other!"

"Shizuru."

"Natsuki?"

"Kiss, please."

Shizuru's so near, I can't tell if her eyes are redder from her lips. She kisses me. There is an eon in her kiss. It is like wine from the gods, like fire for Prometheus. To hell with skeletons. Bless the gods for muscle, nerves, and skin and skin.

Then again, we're both girls and I'm thinking right now. I'm thinking about the hipbone and how it's supposed to accommodate childbearing in women, and what the hell am I supposed to do with mine if I'm going to marry another woman too? Screw naturalism. Screw naturalism. Screw utilitarian concepts too.

Shizuru pulls back suddenly and straightens her black uniform. She hurriedly fixes my jacket too.

"Someone's coming."

What a bummer.

"Is this the way to the little girls' potty room?" That voice rings a bell.

Then the figure emerges from the cascading shadows of the dusty tall bookshelves. Bob cut, slim petite figure, eyes framed by round outdate glasses. Shit. It's fox-face, Shion.

"What the hell are you doing here, twerp?"

"Well, sea witch, I –" her large eyes scroll over to Shizuru and she shuts up and leaves. Her footsteps echo through the library.

I swear I'm going to punch right through her gut later. And I'm going to make her do my history paper. And I—

"Natsuki"

"S-sorry about that, Shizuru."

"That friend of yours is..." She gets up and moves away from me, "she's a nice person, right?"

"Right."

"Can she be trusted?"

"What's wrong, Shizuru? Did she hurt you? Because I'm going to kill her if she did."

"No, not at all. I was just wondering" Shizuru reaches for my hand "I want to get to know Natsuki and Natsuki's friends too."

"Shion's an amiable asshole. Yes, she's trustworthy. She's not the type who sings."

She somehow sighs in relief. I'm not sure why. She doesn't want to tell me by the look on her face.

For a moment, I can't see right through her. I can't tell if she's sad or happy, I can't tell if she's wondering about something or just looking out pointlessly at the cracks on the wall behind me, like a fucking sexless skeleton.

...

.

* * *

.

...

Ya know how you love people and so you stick to them no matter how smelly their shit is. You give them pieces of your sanity, some good advices, some foods fer thought, but they don't listen to you at all. So when they don't listen to ya, all you can spare for them is a shoulder to cry on. Well, I'm like that. I love the bushido concept of loyalty. Through the gates of hell we will march together. Comrades til death.

So now I'm sittin' in this room lookin' not so loverly, waiting for Natsuki to come home. It's ten fucking thirty by the way. Two hours past curfew and I'm sure she's going to climb up the tree and sneak in through Kazama's window so that our fat landlady doesn't see her.

Knock. Knock.

Oh so the sea witch is home. I'mma open the door now...

"Hey."

"Shion, I have something to ask you and it's important." She says as she quietly closes the door behind her.

"Did you do anything to Shizuru?"

Oh shit.

"Like what? Rape her? Of course not! I wouldn't even touch her with a ten feet pole." I'm going to lie down now. Face on my pillow so she doesn't see how my nostrils are flaring. My eye is twitching and I'm dying to shout, 'MY GOD! YES!'

"I know you don't like her, so I'm just wondering if you know something about her that I don't know" she sits on the edge of my bed "But that I should know even though I'm not supposed to know."

Knowknowknowknowknow. KNOW. The fucking word rings in my head. I hate it. I hate knowing a lot of things.

"Nothing" I says, my voice muffled by the pillow a bit.

She lets out a little exasperated grumble and gets off of my bed. I can hear her footsteps. She is going to the bathroom. Did I ever tell ya that Natsuki's title should not be "Ice Queen" but "Toilet Queen"?

"Natsuki!"

"Oi?" she asks, excitement apparent in her voice. But I ain't singing. Oh no, Shion Tennouji doesn't sing - literally and metaphorically so.

"Your classmate, Hana, left you your homework for your literature class. The deadline is tomorrow so answer it later, kay?"

"Okay. Thanks."

...

* * *

Natsuki stares at the questions in disbelief. How is she supposed to answer them?

1 - Have you by any chance felt that you were a musical instrument in your past life? Explain.

2 - If you were a musical instrument, what kind of musical instrument were you?

3 - What time period were you probably made?

4 - Was your previous owner male or a female? Describe him/her. Describe your thoughts about him/her.

.

* * *

.

So you got me, ladies and gents. There was no Hana and there ain't no homework for the sea witch to do. I'm just in my Sherlock Holmes mode again.

.

.

.

* * *

Till next time. Reference to previous chap in case you didn't get something. Next time, we go back in sync with chapter 2!


End file.
